FESTIVAL OF CHICHESTER: Chichester independent authors CHINDI on how to get published

Getting your work published will be the aim behind a Festival of Chichester workshop being staged by Chichester independent writers group CHINDI.

Writers’ Workshop: From Pen to Publication will be held at The Novium, Tower Street, Chichester, on Saturday, June 20, from 10.30am-12.30pm – a session which will draw inspiration from the Novium itself.

Jill

Writers Christopher Joyce, Jill King and Becky Edwards will lead the morning –

and will be putting the emphasis firmly on fun and participation.

“It is all about the art of story-telling,” Jill says. “We are all great believers that story-telling goes right back to people sitting around the fire telling stories but that there are techniques and ways of getting your reader hooked that you can explore and develop.

“It is about creating the stories and characters that people engage with, stories that make people want to keep turning the pages. It’s about building character and making sure your reader wants to know what is going to happen next. It’s also about creating a story arc so that you have a pattern and a rhythm to it.

“We are not planning to teach all that. We are planning to share some of our ideas and to get other people to share their ideas. It’s really an alternative to going on a long and very expensive creative writing course!

“We are going to be taking our inspiration from the Novium. We are going to use some of the characters and objects we find there and explore the ways we can use them to tell a story. But the workshop is called From Pen to Publication. We are three people who have managed successfully to publish our books. We are going to be sharing our experiences about how we managed to do it, given the technology and the new routes that are available now.”

Christopher is the author of a series of books under the Creatures of Chichester heading: “He has had a successful series with three already published and another one being written. He has got a lot of experience of engaging with children and stories. Becky writes children’s books as well. She is a relatively-new member of CHINDI and is great fun.”

Jill’s book was a biography of her hair stylist. It has given her the confidence to move on to the novel form.

“I am writing a novel which is set in Sri Lanka, partly in World War Two and partly in current times. It’s requiring more research and will take longer to write, but I have got the confidence from writing the biography now.

“I have always loved writing and word-smithing, but I worked in business for more than 30 years. My writing became really quite conservative with a particular, business-like style. I wanted to explore my creativity one step at a time rather than go straight into a novel which seemed daunting. But having written the biography now, I feel I am ready to go into a more imaginative sphere of writing.

“I have got the skeleton of the structure, and I have got all the characters worked out. I have written two or three chapters so far, but the historical links and the geographical links will need at least one more trip to Sri Lanka before I manage to get all the details right and the story-telling how I want it.”

Tickets for the writers’ workshop are £10; seniors £8; students £8: “I really want to emphasise: it is going to be participative fun, either for people who have never written but want to or who are writing already and just want more confidence.”